Work

business & working

Why do we need social business?

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The Dachis Group’s latest XPLANATiON of the attributes of a socially optimized business is a pretty good answer to the question, “What is social business?”

Looking just at the key differences in the info-graphic, I’d like to dig into “Why” these differences are necessary:

Greater acceptance of risks & failures: This is how complex problems are addressed, and all businesses are dealing with more complexity. As I mentioned in leadership emerges from network culture, a Probe-Sense-Respond approach is necessary. Dave Snowden underlines the fact that over half of your probes will fail and hence the need to have a culture where failure is an option. It’s what Dave calls “safe-fail”: “We conduct safe-fail experiments. We don’t do fail-safe design. If an experiment succeeds, we amplify it. If an experiment fails, we dampen it.” Failure is not just an option, it’s a common occurrence.

Clear guidelines allow everyone to speak openly on behalf of the company. That’s because hyperlinks have subverted hierarchy. Everyone is connected. In hierarchical organizations, workers are more connected when they go home than when they’re at work. This is a sure sign of the obsolescence of many management control systems.  The Internet has changed everything.

Democratization of information: User-generated content is ubiquitous and much of it is very useful. Search engines give each worker more information and knowledge than any CEO had 10 years ago. Pervasive connectivity will change traditional power structures, though the full effects of this are not yet visible.

Leaders and experts can easily emerge: It takes different leadership, or leadership for networks, to do the important work in complex work environments, which is to increase collaboration and support social learning in the workplace. If the main point of the internet is to remove “barriers to socializing”, then shouldn’t leadership in a networked, social business strive for a similar objective?

Team-oriented, much flatter, exists beyond the org chart: This is another result of a networked society but I’m not sure if team is the best term for social business and I would use collaboration instead. This is the objective of Wirearchy: a dynamic multi-way flow of power and authority based on information, knowledge, trust and credibility, enabled by interconnected people and technology.

Greater business visibility, info flows vertically and horizontally: There are emerging patterns and dynamics related to interconnected people and interlinked information flows, which are bypassing established traditional structures and services. It’s part of wired work.

Comfortable with outward facing communication: Most of the action in business is moving to the edge and a greater percentage of the workforce will be customer-facing.

Leadership emerges from network culture

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Even five years ago it was not the norm to work at a distance. Employers wanted to keep workers on-site, when it made no sense, as this post from 2005 noted: virtual work, but we need you onsite. Virtual work is no longer limited to mostly free-agents, as many salaried employees today work at least part-time off-site. It’s becoming the norm and bringing change with it, even though that change may not be visible.

When people work at a distance, an implicit shift occurs. They have to be trusted to get the work done. Management also shifts from measuring time to measuring results. A new culture emerges. It becomes more trusting. Trust is the glue that holds creative organizations together, not rules and regulations.

Culture is an emergent property of people working together. Leadership is also an emergent property, I am becoming more convinced, as I recently wrote. This post received a lot of attention and Johnnie Moore referred me to an interesting, though rather expensive, book on Managing Without Leadership:

I propose that we consider the phenomenon of leadership in like manner, and conceive of it as part and parcel of organisational practice. In a naturalistic redescription of the phenomenon, we might view it as an emergent, self-organising property of complex systems. There would then be no need for engaging in more leadership studies: instead, we could redirect our attention to the study of the fine-grained properties of contextualised organisational practice.

Donald Clark also passed on a post he made a few years ago on Leadership Training:

Leadership Training: Complex behaviours and skills are reduced to simple geometric diagrams, a pyramid here, an interlocking circle here, a four quadrant typology there. Leadership training became a byword for contradictory theories and over-simplification. A few choice quotes are thrown in, preferably from historically famous leaders, some interactive exercises, straight out of traditional management courses and you’re off.

One way to look at leadership in our complex work world is through the lens of improvisation. In improv, nobody is in charge and leadership is shared. John Moore [not Johnnie] says that from improv, one can also learn how to:

  • be a passionate follower;
  • be a better listener and reactor;
  • make instinctive decisions and deal with the consequences;
  • trust others; and
  • make others look good

These all seem like good advice for organizational leadership as well. Everyone can practise improv skills and everyone can exert leadership in the organization. John Moore says that a major benefit of embracing improv skills for business is that failure is an option, which aligns with Dave Snowden’s Cynefin framework, that advises organizations to Probe-Sense-Respond in order to manage in complexity.

Dave also underlines the fact that over half of your probes will fail and hence the need to have a culture where failure is an option. It’s what Dave calls “safe-fail”: “We conduct safe-fail experiments. We don’t do fail-safe design. If an experiment succeeds, we amplify it. If an experiment fails, we dampen it.” Failure is not just an option, it’s a common occurrence.

As networked, distributed workplaces become the norm, trust will emerge from environments that are open, transparent and diverse. As a result of improved trust, leadership will be seen for what it is; an emergent property of a balanced network and not some special property available to only the select few. This shift may give us the real democracy our organizations need to realize their full creative human potential.

Is leadership an emergent property?

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Note: this post is in early Beta.

Is leadership an emergent property of people working together (social capital) or is it something delivered, in a top-down fashion by an individual? I was asked about this recently, and immediately thought about the Apache nation that had only situational leaders, Nantans, who were in charge as long as warriors were willing to follow them. Because of this decentralization, they were able to fight the Spanish for a long time, regrouping as necessary, ultimately destroyed by a “benevolent” United States.

Looking at my outboard brain (my blog) I’ve reviewed some thoughts on leadership, which has not really been my focus, but is perhaps more of an emergent property after almost eight years. These are some of the ideas that still resonate with me.

Let me begin with this quote from Peter Levesque, which I picked up in 2004, showing how digital  interconnectedness may change our view leadership:

I suggest that the leaders will be found among the aggressively intelligent citizenry, liberated from many tasks and obligations by technology freely shared; using data, information and knowledge acquired from open source databases, produced from the multiples of billions of dollars of public money invested through research councils, universities, social agencies, and public institutions.

But an aggressively intelligent citizenry needs access to its own ideas. This in an ongoing battle with the established powers. Open information and access to our common knowledge assets seems to be a required part of any new leadership model.

Leaders may be required in hierarchies but are they necessary in wirearchies? The great work of our time may be to design, build and test new organizational models that reflect our democratic values and can function in an interconnected world. Leadership today may be more of an architectural task, or one of setting up the right systems.

We’re now at the stage where we have some new ideas for work (wirearchy, natural enterprises, workplace democracy) and some new technologies (social, nano-bio-techno-cogno). The next step in this evolution is for a new organizational model and that conversation has already started. The ideology will come later.

Ideas lead technology. Technology leads organizations. Organizations lead institutions. Then ideology brings up the rear, lagging all the rest—that’s when things really get set in concrete.

Does ridiculously-easy group forming mean that leadership can now emerge when people get together for collective action? What kind of leadership is there in mass, decentralized, social movements, like the Arab Spring or Occupy Wall Street movements?

Warren Bennis wrote that hierarchy is a prosthesis for trust. With open systems, trust emerges.

Knowledge workers, collaborate, you have nothing to lose but your managers. This is a statement I made a bit in jest on Twitter, but the truth behind it is that management is less useful to the interconnected, professional, concept worker. With fewer managers and hyperlinks subverting hierarchy, will a different breed of leadership emerge?

It takes different leadership, or leadership for networks, to do the important work in complex work environments, which, in my opinion, is to increase collaboration and support social learning in the workplace.

I haven’t really answered my own question whether leadership is an emergent property of net work, but I have little doubt that we need different kinds of leadership (more open, transparent & diverse) and people with these attributes may emerge as their peers allow them to lead; for the time being.

Spreading social capitalism

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I had the pleasure of meeting Dan Robles at Innotribe and his recent post on It is Time to Evolve, got me thinking and making some connections. Dan starts with the big picture:

How the world really works

The Internet and social media have shifted the factors of production away from land, labor, and capital to a higher order of human organization.  This is what we need to be talking about.  People today produce things with knowledge – social, creative, and intellectual knowledge.  These are the factors of production for that 99% of the value that exists on Earth.

Dan goes on to say:

How can we expect to create any type of fair and rational economy from a bunch of invisible stuff milling around the parks?  There is no escape from Market Capitalism and no path to Social Capitalism without a Knowledge Inventory, period.

The knowledge inventory link above takes you to a video which discusses the three factors of production in social capitalism:

  1. Intellectual Capital (ability to collect, retain & share information
  2. Social Capital (ability  of people to work together)
  3. Creative Capital (ability  to combine diverse ideas)

These reminded me of the Law of the Few and how ideas get connected in communities.

knowledge inventory

Generally, Mavens exhibit the greatest intellectual capital; Connectors have the most diverse (creative) networks and Salespeople get things done (action). I wonder if this metaphor/model would help to get social capitalism “across the chasm”. Identify sufficient Mavens, Connectors & Salespeople (you need all three) and then build up to the 10% critical mass necessary to effectively spread ideas:

“When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority,” said SCNARC Director Boleslaw Szymanski, the Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor at Rensselaer. “Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame.”

Leadership in Complexity

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In organizing for diversity and complexity, I discussed structural changes that are needed in our institutions. Kevin Wheeler has a great slide presentation on leadership in complexity that looks at what is required in such a diverse and complex work world. In the future of leadership development, Kevin describes some new core leadership skill sets (Slides 17-21):

  • Dealing with Ambiguity
  • Dealing with Complexity
  • Dealing with Interdependencies
  • Fostering Creativity
  • Challenging Assumptions

Two shifts are driving the need for a new type of leadership: 1) networks are giving workers the freedom to act and cooperate and 2) the optimal control structure for complex environments is loose hierarchies and strong networks. Leadership, and organizational support functions, need to move from command & control to enable & encourage.

Kevin’s presentation aligns with several of the ideas I’ve been working on. Using terms from his presentation, I would say that a transparent, flexible and open organizational model is necessary so that leaders can listen to and analyze what is happening in real time. In turn, leaders can help set context and build consensus. This is 21st century leadership.

 

"the truth is utterly concealed"

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From The Economist — Bosses think their firms are caring. Their minions disagree.

Tragicomically, the study found that bosses often believe their own guff, even if their underlings do not. Bosses are eight times more likely than the average to believe that their organisation is self-governing. (The cheery folk in human resources are also much more optimistic than other employees.) Some 27% of bosses believe their employees are inspired by their firm. Alas, only 4% of employees agree. Likewise, 41% of bosses say their firm rewards performance based on values rather than merely on financial results. Only 14% of employees swallow this.

It’s like the aristocracy prior to the French revolution or the 1% sipping champagne while the 99% occupy Wall Street. This kind of disconnect is not good. Common language and metaphors are essential for understanding. When one group sees the glass half full while the other has no glass, how can there be meaningful dialogue? ‘Leadership by walking around’ or getting executives off their butts and out of their offices and board rooms would be a good start. The business world is changing and nobody is going to understand what’s happening from inside the walls and filters of the C-suites.

As soon as you create a reporting chain, you add information filters. Too many filters and reality gets distorted. As Tim Harford wrote in his book, Adapt: Why success always starts with failure:

There is a limit to how much honest feedback most leaders really want to hear; and because we know this, most of us sugar-coat our opinions whenever we speak to a powerful person. In a deep hierarchy, that process is repeated many times, until the truth is utterly concealed inside a thick layer of sweet-talk.

I hope organizational leaders wake up soon, for their sake and ours.

New Hire Emergent Practices

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In May I asked what interesting new hire practices have emerged in the workplace and later re-posted the question to Google+. I also collected a number of bookmarks on onboarding, as some companies call it. There are many good practices, such as:

  • Dedicated coaches
  • Formal introductions to people in the work network, especially those at a distance.
  • Encouraging informal conversations.
  • Giving enough time to settle into the work.
  • Using collaboration platforms to enable better communication.

Good practices can be summed up with three key lessons:

  1. Connect People
  2. Connect with Social Media (less hierarchical than other forms of communication).
  3. Start the process as early as possible

Here are some of the more interesting emergent practices, in my opinion.

Offering to pay people to leave after onboarding, so that only motivated workers stay.

Have new employees work one level down for a week to see how their work affects others in the hierarchy. (Executive Yak)

Integrating staff into the workflow, culture, and team from day one (in a supportive environment). This reflects the emerging freelance economy that I work in, much more than the traditional corporate environment. As Will Kryski noted:

 I jump into companies as a contractor with no hand holding, mentoring, etc and am expected to perform from day one. Huge learning curves, little info or help, even on how to use the timesheet system. I just ask as required or figure it out on my own.

And to which I responded that one advantage we free-agents have is in adapting to new contexts. We change clients more frequently than salaried employees change jobs. We’ve had to learn how to adapt. I remember one client where I got to spend a week in a broom closet.

What I found most interesting is that I did not find a lot of unique or emergent practices. Perhaps these are being kept as company secrets or maybe HR departments in general lack creativity and innovation.

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Cooperation and networks at Innotribe

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Stowe Boyd & I are opening the presentation on corporate culture this morning, here in Toronto at Sibos. We will be looking at how organizational frameworks and models have changed. Stowe will talk about the architecture of cooperation:

The new architecture of work is now emerging, after decades of transition. White collar work became knowledge work which has now become creative work. The transition from process to networks is not just a recasting, not just a different style of communication. The work is styled as information sharing through social relationships, and where ‘following’ takes the place of ‘invitation’. People coordinate efforts, but work on a wide variety of activities, which are not necessarily co-aligned with others’ work, and which are not necessarily even known in a general way. A new degree of privacy and autonomy animates cooperative work, in comparison to collaborative work. Individuals cooperating hand off information or take on tasks in a fashion that is like businesses cooperating: they see the benefit in cooperating, and don’t have to share a common core set of strategic goals to do so: they don’t need the alignment of goals that defines old style business employment.

I will discuss the TIMN model, which I learned about via John Robb. I will overlay it with a look at dominant communications media and talk about some of the organizational changes we are seeing and may see in the near future.

We may see more of the following.

Wirearchy: a dynamic multi-way flow of power and authority based on information, knowledge, trust and credibility, enabled by interconnected people and technology.

Heterarchies are networks of elements in which each element shares the same “horizontal” position of power and authority, each playing a theoretically equal role [wikipedia].

Chaordic refers to a system of governance that blends characteristics of chaos and order. The term was coined by Dee Hock the founder and former CEO of the VISA credit card association [wikipedia].

And I’ll ask these and some some other questions:

Do networks obsolesce hierarchies? Can they co-exist?

What happens when your customers are more connected than your organization?

How does the transparency that networks enable change your organizational model?

Innotribe at Sibos Toronto

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This morning I’m heading to Toronto to participate in the Innotribe stream for the Sibos conference. Peter Vander Auwera invited me and I’m really looking forward to what is already a most interesting conference, as I read the tweets and posts. I’m presenting on organizational models over time with Stowe Boyd and the session is moderated by the always-interesting Mark Dowds.

Peter’s blog has been covering many of the themes that will be discussed – Digital Identity; the new physics of big data; and new economies for example.

Some comments via Twitter so far:

@petervan – Decrease the bank’s AND the customer’s risk should be one of the principles

@dsearls – Has anybody ever drowned in a Deep Dive? Just wondering. :-) Corollary to last tweet: I have been rained out in a brainstorm.

@marovdan – # innotribe  has grown and matured into something very important. The future course of finance is being debated and decided. Here.

There should be lots to learn and much to write about, which of course I’ll share here. Hugh Macleod is the official cartoonist for the event, so that should be a real treat!

We are (still) the solution to the problem

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In 2008 (just before the financial crisis), Jay Cross noted many dysfunctional workplace practices in a survey of 237 respondents worldwide. Is this still the state of the workplace?

  • a lack of cooperation;
  • no time for reflection;
  • no ability to create DIY [do it yourself] tools for work;
  • no communities of practice for support;
  • lack of professional development;
  • poor training; and
  • working in organizations that are slow to change.

Does this resemble an organization you work for, or work with?

Michele Martin commented in 2008 that:

What strikes me is the fundamental sense of disempowerment in the workplace that suggests that people are essentially at the mercy of the companies they work for. While obviously there’s some truth to this, especially in an economic downturn, I still believe that people have far more control over these issues than they believe. One of my main goals in working with people on integrating social media and professional development is to point out how empowering it is to take control of your own learning by starting a blog and pursuing DIY professional development. If the will is there, the means certainly exist …

Unlike people in poverty, our power to move into another less dysfunctional system of work is still within our grasp, especially if we take a DIY approach to professional development. Systems, after all, are created by people, so we also need to be working on changing ourselves so that we’re in a better position to change the system. It’s not an either/or as much as an AND situation – change people AND change systems.

If these are still issues (and I see them in many organizations) then we need to remember that we are the solution to the problem. However, that situation may not last forever. As the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second-best time is today.